"His opponent's contempt for the love of literary form, he cried, only too plainly revealed a taste for the frenzied barbarism of certain epochs, but without such a love no true humanity was possible. or even conceivable, not now, not ever."

"I have always been struck, in America, by an emotional poverty so bottomless, and a terror of human life, of human touch, so deep, that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable, organic connection between his public stance and his private life."

"I sometimes try to find an equivalent in English before I really understand the French. Then I realize that I don't understand the French, even after trying several times, and I cast my eye rather listlessly here and there within the paragraph hoping the meaning of it will fall into place by itself, which it sometimes does. But today it does not, and then my mind wanders."

"Everyone swore that the food in Beijing and Chengdu would be different from what I'd had in the United States. 'It's more real,' they said, meaning, it turned out, that I could dislike it more authentically."

“One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night,
Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable
pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a
warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles
dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria
Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so,
making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every
moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries
sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt
with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason:
they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in
the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans,
sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the
triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane
overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.”

"I had started along a narrow channel beyond which events were piling up with multiplied density; I had only to seize them by the handful and throw them in the face of my competitor, who had never guessed their existence."

To begin with
there’s the small problem of address:
calling you
by the only name some of us
knew you by,
hailing you by titles
you could not possibly
have cared for,
referring you to
strange and clouded
origins that eat into
our past our pain
like prize-winning cassava tubers in
abandoned harvest fields…
Some of us never ever met you.
And who would believe
that but those who know
the tragedies of our land
where
non-meetings,
visions unopening and other such
abortions are
every day reality?
To continue a
confession of sorts,
‘Miss Head’ will just not do
‘Bessie’ too familiar
Bessie Head,
your face swims into focus
through soft clouds of
cigarette smoke and from behind the
much much harder barriers erected by some
quite unbelievable
20th. century philosophy,
saying more of
your strength
than all the tales
would have us think.
For the moment,
we fear and
dare not accept that
given how things
are,
poetry almost becomes
dirges and
not much more.
But
we hold on to knowing
ourselves as daughters of
darklight women
who are so used to Life
– giving it
feeding it –
Death
was always
quite unwelcome;
– taking them by surprise –
an evil peevish brat
to be flattered,
cleaned
oiled
pomaded
over-dressed and perfumed…
We fear to remember:
fatigued as we are by so much
death and dying and
the need to bury and
to mourn.
Bessie Head:
such a fresh ancestress!
If you chance
on a rainy night
to visit,
if you chance
on a sunny day
to pass by,
look in to see
– how well we do
– how hard we fight
– how loud we scream
against the plots
– to kill our souls our bodies too
– to take our land, and
– feed us shit.
Come
benevolently,
Dear Fresh Spirit,
that rejoining
The Others,
you can tell them
now more than ever,
do we need
the support
the energy
to create
recreate and
celebrate…
nothing more
absolutely
nothing less.